Reading experience of comparing Chinese and western literature

When I was a child, I listened to Yu Guangzhong reading Homesickness, and I haven't had much contact with his works since. It was not until recently that I saw that translation was the avenue that I found myself missing a lot. There is an article "Comparison of Chinese and Western Literature" in "Translation is the Avenue", which fundamentally introduces the differences between Chinese and Western literature and gains a lot from reading it.

This paper introduces the differences between Chinese and western cultures from two aspects: internal ideological and cultural background, and external language and writing.

Among the three major factors of western culture, Greek mythology, Christianity and modern science, the first two determine European classical literature. Whether it is polytheism in Greece or monotheism in Christianity, people feel that Almighty God dominates the universe, not mortals. People care about not only his relationship with others, but also his relationship with God, not only in this body, but also behind him. In western literature, God's punishment and man's punishment are touching themes: Prometheus who ate the eagle with his liver, Sisyphus who pushed the stone up the mountain, Ulysses who was exiled to the sea, Faust who fell into hell and so on. However, due to the lack of myth or religious background, China literature is essentially human literature, and its theme is individual, society and history, rather than "the time between man and nature". Although there are stories of the Goddess Chang'e flying to the moon, mending the sky and Houyi shooting at the sun in ancient China literature, they are not as spectacular as Greek mythology. Religion has no place in China literature; In modern western literature, the most popular protagonist is the devil, such as Faust and Paradise Lost. The highest realm of western literature is religion or myth, and the theme is the conflict between man and god; The highest realm of China literature is the tacit understanding between man and nature, and the theme of the world is more universal.

Because of their different views on the supernatural world, China literature is sensitive to observation and full of emotion, but it seems that it is not as good as western culture in the application of imagination and ideas. China literature is good at short lyric poems and prose, but it has not produced any macro epic narrative poems, and its literary criticism is not systematic, and its drama creation is nearly two thousand years later than that of the West.

China's literature is extremely flexible and persistent, which can't be compared and achieved by western literature. Chinese dialects vary widely, but their characters are unified, maintaining a long literary history and becoming a tradition. There is no problem for middle school students to read the Journey to the West 400 years ago, or the Tang poems 1000 years ago. Even the historical records of two thousand years ago or the older Book of Songs can be read with annotations. In Europe and America, Latin has become a dead literature, and no one knows it except scholars, experts and monks. The Tales of Cannes, written in Middle English 600 years ago, must be translated into modern English before people can appreciate it. Even the English of Shakespeare 300 years ago needs to be annotated before it can be studied. China's writing is pure. China's culture is higher than that of neighboring countries, which affects the surrounding culture and has few loanwords. With frequent cultural exchanges in Europe, it is difficult to keep the languages of various countries pure. English, for example, was invaded and assimilated by Rome, Angles, Denmark and Norman, and its writing is extremely complicated, which can be roughly divided into three sources: Latin, French and Old English. Chinese characters in China are very flexible in culture. Western grammar is thoughtful, but it is too complicated. Chinese grammar doesn't have the glyph changes of quantity, tense, voice and gender like western characters. Because Chinese is not a phonetic symbol, pronunciation changes do not affect the font, and no matter how many dialects, it is also a unified Chinese character. English is not. Dialects in Scotland, Ireland and Wales are spelled differently. Even in English itself, many glyphs have changed greatly in the past 600 years because of the change of pronunciation. Subjects and verbs, which are indispensable in English grammar, can often be omitted in China's classical poems. In addition, the singular and plural problems of English nouns need not be paid attention to in Chinese; The tangled tense changes in Chinese don't need special attention, and they can always be inferred from context and context, without any change of words.

Literature, based on history, has come all the way from the development of their respective civilizations, creating different literary characteristics today. Western literature changes all the way, seeking development in the process of change; China's literature is changing, developing and advancing all the way.